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Does anyone know of a ranking/statistical analysis of the most frequently used key signatures in the standard/student piano repertoire?

Of course, I realize that C major will be number 1, major will probably be more common than minor, and key signatures with lots of sharps and flats are used less frequently. But it would be nice if there were something more precise.

Surely there is a difference, too, between "standard" piano repertoire - covering everything by both major and lesser composers - and "student" piano repertoire written for those still developing technique and artistry, depending upon how far the student repertoire extends into the standard repertoire. Establishing that definition will certainly show that keys with fewer sharps and flats are much more common. Even a look at piano syllabi will show that early grades have pieces with fewer sharps and flats.

In the standard repertoire, it's a given that the more remote keys - those with four or more sharps and flats - are more frequently used starting with the Romantic period as "well-tempering" became the more universal form of tuning, but I still don't see any practical use for making a statistical analysis of such information.

Does anyone know of a ranking/statistical analysis of the most frequently used key signatures in the standard/student piano repertoire?

Of course, I realize that C major will be number 1, major will probably be more common than minor, and key signatures with lots of sharps and flats are used less frequently. But it would be nice if there were something more precise.

Mark_C
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Registered: 11/11/09
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Originally Posted By: BruceD

....Perhaps you can enlighten me as to why you think "it would be nice."

Actually I would be a little interested to know what's the most common key for Chopin's works. I wouldn't be interested in anything else about the question, including because.....who knows how to do it, including because of the factors you mentioned.

And in fact, even if we did it for just a single composer like Chopin, it wouldn't be simple. Should we count a mazurka equally to a sonata? What do we do with the different keys of the different movements of a sonata? (Jason take note -- you'd need to re-do the Beethoven!)

Well, I program, so it was just a question of typing in the following data (the 32 key signatures in order): "['f','A','C','Eb','c','F','D','c','E','G','Bb','Ab','Eb','c#','D','G','d','Eb','g','G','C','F','f','F#','G','Eb','e','A','Bb','E','Ab','c']"... and then doing a little manipulation. Go Python.

Originally Posted By: BDB

How about the most common key signatures of Chopin's 24 Preludes? Or any number of other composer's sets of 24?

....Perhaps you can enlighten me as to why you think "it would be nice."

Actually I would be a little interested to know what's the most common key for Chopin's works. I wouldn't be interested in anything else about the question, including because.....who knows how to do it, including because of the factors you mentioned.

Actually, you got it right on your first try, at least if wikipedia can be trusted:

"twenty-four of Frédéric Chopin's piano pieces are in A-flat major, more than any other key."

To answer the “What exactly will you do with this information?” and “why on earth do you want an answer to this question?” questions, in learning scales, it seemed like an obvious question to me (but I tend to be above average in curiosity level). I don't really plan on doing anything with it, but I would like to know.

The more knowledgeable you are as a musician the better equipedyou are to play music. Any knowledge or skill be it in sports or music, is to your benefit to know.

But to be fair to you, if you only want to play music contained in any piano book 1 in learning to play the piano, it is not likely you will ever need to know more than a couple of key signatures. But for the rest of the piano world, they would be anxious to learn them all, given the time and opportunity to explore them.

The responses to my question remind me of a comment my dad (who lives in the "heartland") has made on many occasions about the difference between New Yorkers and others -- if you ask someone from anywhere else in the US what time it is, they will tell you the time, but if you ask a New Yorker, he/she will say, "What are you asking me for?"

I in no way endorse this stereotypical view of New Yorkers, but the responses did remind me of that.

Even if knowing the answer made no difference in what I study or how I practice, I would still like to know. I am a curious guy.

A more interesting version of the question for me is something like: Calculate the variation (e.g. variance) among key signatures as a function of composer. What patterns do we see? We probably see more variation the more modern the composer, but not necessarily: Haydn would have a much greater variation-score than Beethoven.